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Video Capture

By Michael34 ·
Hello,

My question is I currently have a Dazzle USB video capture device. My problem is I can capture video's and movies, however I am getting lots and lots of frame drops (Usually out of 10,000 frames I loose 2,000, in no specific order), and the sound is also a little on the choppy side.

I use Pinnacle Studo 8 to get all my captures, however I still loose a massive amount of frames. I am presuming this is because the device uses USB?

My system Specs are:
AMD Athlon 1.0 GHZ
784 MB RAM
32 MB NVIDIA Video Card
80 GB 7200 RPG Maxtor HDD.

Even after I did a clean install of Windows, I installed the software and drivers with the same results.

Mainly I want to capture video and have it do a good job, unlike what I am getting now. I would like to get a PCI device, as my Video card takes my AGP Slot, so I would be unable to use one that uses AGP. Also I noticed that most of the capture cards are Coax not RCA. My current setup is RCA (Red, White and Yellow connectors).

My questions are:
1.) Is the Coax better than the RCA for use when capturing Video, and should I get a Coax Video Capture Card?
2.) How much would a PCI one cost? I just need one that does a good job and is compatable with Pinnacle Studo 8.
3.) Also what is a good format to use when capturing Video Codex wise? I know I had a codex I used with Movie Star that did a good job, however I could not get an entire movie because the file size within 20 min was greater than 4 GB. Currently I am using PCLEPIM1 32-bit Compressor, and Divx which both work fine, but drop frames like crazy (although I think its because the capture device is USB).

Any help is appriciated! Thanks.

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by saihib In reply to Video Capture

Are the USB ports on your computer version 1.0? If so, that's your problem. USB 2.0 devices are backward compatible with USB 1.0 BUT they still run at USB 1.0 speed which has a horrible bandwidth limitation for capturing video. You can get a USB 2.0 card to put in your computer for about $30.
Coax supposedly gives you better quality but I can't tell the difference. Use Cinepak codecs.

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by Michael34 In reply to

Damn, I really did not expect that big of a difference. I bought a USB 2.0 Card for my labtop and now instead of loosing 25% of my frames, I am loosing 0 and thats out of a 80Min Video. Thanks alot I got a USB 2.0 CardBus PCMCIA card for $16.85 and it works outstanding, No frame drops or anything.

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by jschein In reply to Video Capture

1. Coax or RCA? it's all about what kind of quality you prefer, rca is better IMO.

2. PCI vid cards are only 50-500 dollars. Check out nice prices @ www.newegg.com.

3. Format is once again on what kind of quality you want, the media available and so forth. Divx codec has great compression and quality. However maximum resolution is not there.

Also, whenever you are running any kind of video capture, be sure to stop EVERY BACKGROUND PROCESS not needed to run the system. Anything, especially anti-virus, will cause the problems of lost frames.

Good Luck.

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by Michael34 In reply to

Thanks for the help, I also terminated all background processes like always when capturing and with the new USB 2.0 it don't drop the frames. I tested it with the USB 1.0 and it still dropped the frames, but thanks for the reminder.

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by parvus1202 In reply to Video Capture

Are you capturing from analog? Look for cheaper Pinnacle DC30 or DC50. You might be able to solve your problem by capturing bit by bit, not the entire movie. Then just edit them on Premier.

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by Michael34 In reply to

I am using the Pinnacle DC80. The problem was my USB 1.0

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by CG IT In reply to Video Capture

USB is definitely a minus however, What devices are you using to create the video that your trying to import to your computer using Pinnacle?

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by CG IT In reply to

where ever you can us SVideo. Higher quality than RCA.

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by CG IT In reply to

bump up to a 2ghz AMD XP and bump up your graphics card to 128MB or better. The GF Ti 4600 or the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. If your not using DDR for your system memory, bump up to DDR.

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by Michael34 In reply to

Yeah, I noticed, USB has costed me more money upgrading and stuff, but now that everything works I am happy. Anyways for the time being my setup now works since the upgrade. Thank You for the help though.

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